The Gravity Lounger

The Gravity Lounger was a project for our final Building and Materials class, specifically focused on metal fabrication and product development. Our instructor, Rachel, really gave us free rein for the final project in the sense that we could design and build whatever we could imagine. The only stipulation was that it had to be made of metal and built using metal fabrication processes. The project began with each student pitching an idea they wanted to pursue. I had sketched up the idea for a hanging lounge chair, taking inspiration from Eero Aarnio’s iconic hanging bubble chair. However, I wanted mine to hang from a free standing frame and not include the plexiglass bubble. Moving forward from my sketch, I decided to 3D print a prototype of the chair so I could see it in three dimensional space. Everything went extremely well until I got to the actual fabrication of the frame. I simply wasn’t able to bend the 2” ⅛”-wall steel pipe into the 7’ diameter circle I had originally designed. That’s when I changed the frame design to work with the tools and materials I had on hand, which led to the square frame used in the final product. The rest of the build went as planned, and I was extremely happy with the final result.